He muttered in his delirium until his voice died away.
I thought that he would never speak again.
But presently he seemed to revive again to the consciousness
of his surroundings.

“Are you with me, Hewlett?” he whispered.

I placed my hand in his, and he clutched at it with
feverish force.

“You will have the gold, Hewlett,” he
muttered, apparently ignorant that I, too, was a prisoner
and in hardly better plight. “You are the
last of the four. I tried to kill you, Hewlett.”

I said nothing, and he repeated querulously, between
his gasps: “I tried to kill you, Hewlett.
Are you going to leave me to die alone in the dark
now?”

“No,” I answered. “It doesn’t
matter, Lacroix.” And, really, it did
not matter.

“I wanted to kill you,” his voice rambled
on. “Leroux is dead. I watched him
die. I thought if—­you died, too, no
one but I would know the secret of the gold.
I tried to murder you. I blew up the tunnel!”

He paused a while, and again I thought he was dying,
but once more he took up the confession.

“There was nearly a quarter of a ton of blasting
powder and dynamite in the cave. You didn’t
know. You went about so blindly, Hewlett.
I watched you when I talked with you that night here.
How long ago it must have been! When was that?”

I did not tell him it was yesterday. For it
seemed immeasurably long ago to me as well.

“It was stored there,” he said.
“We had brought it up from St. Boniface by sleigh—­so
carefully. Leroux intended to begin mining as
soon as Louis returned. And when he died I meant
to kill you both, so that the gold should all be mine.
I told you it was here because I thought you meant
to kill me, but I meant to kill you when you had made
an end of Leroux. And you killed me. Damn
you!” he snarled. “Why did you not
let me go?”

He paused, and I heard him gasp for breath.
His fingers clutched at my coat-sleeve again and hooped
themselves round mine like claws of steel.

“I had a knife—­once,” he resumed,
relapsing into his delirium; “but I left it
behind me and the police got it. Isn’t
it odd, Leroux,” he rambled on, “that
one always leaves something behind when one has killed
a man? But the newspapers made no mention about
the knife. You didn’t know he was dead,
did you, Leroux, for all your cleverness, until that
fool Hewlett left that paper upon the table?
You knew enough to send me to jail, but you didn’t
know that it was I who killed him. Help me!”
He screamed horribly. “He is here, looking
at me!”

“There is nobody here, Philippe,” I said,
trying to soothe his agony of soul. What a poor
and stained soul it was, travelling into the next
world alone! “There is nobody but me, Philippe!”